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Review: Nederland area safe for sport shooting

By John FryarLongmont Times-Call

Posted:
05/01/2012 09:02:32 PM MDT

Updated:
05/01/2012 09:03:03 PM MDT

BOULDER -- A second review of recreational shooting at a site on Nederland's onetime town dump off Magnolia Road concluded that it's safe for sport shooting as long as the shooters follow U.S. Forest Service's firearms regulations, Boulder County commissioners were told Tuesday.

Glenn Casamassa, the forest supervisor for the Arapaho and Roosevelt National Forests and the Pawnee National Grassland, presented commissioners with an update of Forest Service sport shooting studies that have been completed and reviews that still are under way, particularly focusing on the Nederland site, a former community dump near Allenspark, and the Left Hand Canyon Off-Highway Vehicle area.

About 40 mountain-area residents and property owners showed up to watch the presentation by Casamassa and his deputy, Ron Archuleta.

Casamassa said the Nederland site's review found that shooting activities at the site actually were lighter than when a review was conducted two years earlier, and there were few recorded complaints last year about shooting or noise at the site.

"Given the evidence at the site and the complaint records, an emergency closure is not necessary," Casamassa said -- although the site is currently closed to shooting because of wildfire prevention restrictions in the national forests in western Boulder County.

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The once-popular Allenspark shooting site has been closed since April 2010 because of safety concerns and during a study of the possible creation of a supervised target shooting facility in the area. The emergency closing expires at the end of this year.

Casamassa said the Forest Service is holding off on a decision about the shooting facility until it can reach "a more all-encompassing, all-lands approach" for recreational shooting in the national forest lands.

As for the Left Hand Canyon OHV area, which also is temporarily closed to recreational shooting, Casamassa suggested there could be some future restrictions there, such as allowing shooting only between dawn and dusk, along with educational efforts and a comprehensive plan for managing the popular area's multiple uses.

Decisions on managing the Left Hand Canyon OHV area will follow the installation of Sylvia Clark, the new Boulder District ranger who's to start work later this month.

Archuleta and Casamassa described the collaborative work that's under way among federal and state land management agencies -- an effort that's included Boulder County and to which other Front Range counties have been invited -- to come up with a larger-scale plan for where recreational sports shooting is appropriate and where it's not.

Archuleta said a draft of that collaborative plan is expected to be ready and available for public comment by the end of this year.

James Canyon Drive resident Mike Matzuk said he finds the pace of progress toward coming up with solutions to shooting issues "frustrating." He said he feared the Forest Service won't have sufficient staff and financial resources to handle those challenges.

Had Tuesday's meeting been a public hearing, Matzuk said, his question to the commissioners and the Forest Service officials would have been: "Who is going to enforce this?"

Sally Hempe, who lives in the Bar K Ranch subdivision near Jamestown, said recreational shooting has spread beyond the Left Hand Canyon area.

"I'm not against shooting," she said. "I just want it in a safe place."

Signs about restricted or prohibited areas -- including those barring shooting during the Forest Service's current fire-prevention restrictions -- aren't adequate to begin with, Hempe said, and in some locations, winds have blown the signs away.

As for the costs the Forest Service may encounter in putting up adequate signs about where shooting is or isn't allowed, and having the rangers needed to enforce those rules, Hempe said it would be "a hell of a lot cheaper than putting out a fire."

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